Sean Casey got his nickname of "The Mayor" while playing in Cincinnati because he was so chatty. Casey will talk to anyone anytime, on the field or off, it doesn't matter. Sean joined the Detroit Tigers at the end of the 2006 season and became a great addition to an already great team. Casey grew up in the Pittsburgh, PA area as a Pirates fan, having great respect for current Tigers manager Jim Leyland. With Andy Van Slyke as his centerfielder, Leyland led the Pittsburgh Pirates to three straight division titles in the early 1990s. Van Slyke now serves as Leyland's first base coach in Detroit. Casey reportedly asked Van Slyke for an autograph when he joined the team.
Sean Casey continues his chatty ways in Mo-Town. Here is a great article written by Shawn Windsor of the Detroit Free Press:
CHATTY CAT: Tigers' Casey plays, talks good game
July 15, 2007
Most major league first basemen offer at least some kind of greeting when opposing batters reach first. Then there is the Tigers' Sean Casey, a soft-handed, gap-hitting human Rolodex, capable of recalling minute details about the lives of nearly every player who enters his corner fiefdom.
Or at least it seems that way.
"I remember last year in Pittsburgh," recalled Tigers centerfielder Curtis Granderson when Casey was still playing for the Pirates. "I ended up at first. And he said, 'Man, you're a little guy. I didn't know you had as much power as you did.' Now, I had just gotten a single, so his comment didn't make sense. And then he told me he'd been watching highlights on TV."
Granderson was halfway into his first full season.
"I couldn't believe he even knew who I was," he said.
It is not an uncommon reaction around the sport, and it's part of the reason Casey was voted the friendliest guy in baseball in a Sports Illustrated poll in May. In fact, the vote wasn't close: More than 460 players were polled, and Casey took almost half the votes. The players who tied for second, Jim Thome of the White Sox and Mike Sweeney of the Royals, took roughly 30.
Last month, when the Tigers were in Washington playing the Nationals, Granderson toured Congress with Casey and a few other teammates.
"... And we are walking up when a security guard with a rifle spotted us. He looked intense. Until he saw Sean," Granderson said.
The guard and the chattiest player in baseball began talking. Then Casey slipped inside to watch the Senate vote, and Granderson heard whispers behind him, because a group of tourists recognized Casey. He knew them, too. They'd bumped into the loquacious first baseman a few years back.
And on it went.
And on it goes. Casey the gabber. Casey the one-man welcome wagon. Casey the discreet concierge, offering opponents help in their off-the-field lives.
"He's amazing," said Torii Hunter, the Minnesota Twins centerfielder who was in town for a three-game set before the All-Star break. "I can't say what we talk about. But he's the best."
Casey has yet to find a conversation he wouldn't enter -- or start. Sometimes, when a player reaches first, he asks about his children. Sometimes, he asks whether a "situation" is smoother after the player has been traded. And sometimes, he simply offers encouragement.
"Hey, nice swing." Or, "Nice to see you." Or, "Nice to see you playing well."
Sometimes, Casey is so nice that his teammates give him a hard time. His closest friends, like relief pitcher Jason Grilli, don't always find it endearing when Casey pats an opposing batter on the back.
"I tell him he can't be telling these guys, 'Hey, that was awesome, man!' I mean, try tearing them down for me a little, eh?"
But Grilli shrugs it off, because he knows the reason Casey encourages hitters and offers banter is because Casey gets it.
"He understands this is a platform to reach beyond himself," Grilli said.
Who wouldn't want to share a clubhouse with someone like that?
"You get to know so many different people from different countries in this game," Casey said. "I think it's fascinating to get to know what their stories are."
Because of that, his story is pretty interesting, too.
Practice, practice, practice
Casey inherited his storytelling from his father. He picked up his conversation skills from his mother. Even now, he calls her almost daily, usually on the way to the park.
They talk about nothing. They talk about everything.
"Sometimes it's for 40 minutes, sometimes it's just a few," he said. "It's great. Your mom is your mom."
Although some professional athletes might not easily admit such a relationship, Casey doesn't bother with such insecurity.
"Why should I?" he said.
Besides, he added, "my wife talks to her more than I do."
Casey grew up in Upper St. Clair, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. He began playing baseball at age 5.
"My dad never pushed. It was just fun," Casey said.
But when he reached high school, he didn't play as a freshman. He blamed the player ahead of him, who he thought was a coach's pet. He complained to his father, seeking sympathy.
He received a bag full of tokens instead. Casey took those tokens to a batting cage and hit balls. Every day after school was the same -- thousands of pitches, hours of practice.
"I had been looking to blame someone else," he said. "My dad helped me realize it was me. He bought me the tokens and told me to work."
He hasn't stopped hitting since. Even when scouts at major league tryouts sent him home before he'd had a chance to bat because his 60-yard dash was too slow. Even when Division I schools passed him over despite his reputation as one of the best hitters in western Pennsylvania. Even when he finally reached professional baseball and coaches kept trying to change his swing.
He was never a power hitter, never a base-stealer, never that five-tool player. But everywhere he went, he could hit. That fact often was lost in the stereotype of what baseball players should look like. That gave him fire.
"I didn't want my story to be, 'I'm not good enough.' My story was, 'I am good enough. And I'm going to walk away on my own terms.' That was my chip."
More than 10 years after breaking into the majors, Casey is still hitting. Three times, he has made the All-Star team. Five times, he has hit .300. Last year, he helped get the Tigers to the Series and batted over .500 once he got there. This year, after struggling early, he is back at .300, finding the holes and the gaps.
Said Vance Wilson, the Tigers' backup catcher who has spent the year on the disabled list: "It just seems like whenever we need a hit to bring in a run, he's there." As for Casey's role in the clubhouse and dugouts, Wilson said, "he's like having a second wife on the team."
Casey at the chat
A couple of weeks ago, during the first game of a long home stand against Texas, Casey slapped a grounder in the hole between first and second. He beat the throw to first.
Immediately, he began talking. Eventually, he moved to second when Craig Monroe walked. Once he got there, all he could do was nod, as he couldn't talk to the shortstop and second baseman, who were manning their territory out of earshot.
Finally, he scurried to third when Brandon Inge bunted. The trip there had been unusual for Casey. He rarely got infield hits. He didn't often move around the base on the strength of someone's bunt.
Yet when he got to third, he said nothing of his unusual -- for him -- foray that night. Instead, he asked Ramon Vazquez, the third baseman, how he was enjoying Texas and whether it was better for him than Cleveland, where he'd played last year.
They talked between pitches. Another conversation in the small world of professional baseball, a world Casey helps make smaller.
That role began in the Cape Cod League in the summer of 1994, after his sophomore year at the University of Richmond. He didn't only hit -- he also talked to everyone. "The concession guy, the announcer, the fans," Casey said. "I knew everybody."
His coach at the time started calling him the mayor.
"Hey, Casey, you lobbying for votes? You running for office?"
He wasn't, of course. He was sweeping away the lines that separate those who watch from those who play. Not surprising, the nickname "mayor" stuck. In Cincinnati, where he played for eight seasons, he was known as the "Mayor of Riverfront." Now, he is simply the Mayor.
"He has a unique ability to strike a conversation with anybody at any time," said Tigers hitting coach Lloyd McClendon. "He also knows how difficult this game is. He had to work hard to become the player he is. He doesn't take it for granted."
So when a batter rips a mid-90s heater that tails away from him and successfully reaches base, Casey acknowledges the feat, even if his inquiry distracts the runner.
"When we were in Philly, the third-base coach told me Casey was talking so much that his players weren't paying attention to his signs," said Inge.
Still, few take umbrage with the man who has taken time to learn something about the people who play the game with him. It's human nature to gravitate toward that. Even in major league baseball.
"I want to be remembered for more than hitting," Casey said.
And he will.
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